and on through the zones of the forest, you will have good
opportunities to get ever-changing views of the mountain and its

wealth of creatures that bloom and breathe.
The woods differ but little from those that clothe the mountains to

the southward, the trees being slightly closer together and generally
not quite so large, marking the incipient change from the open sunny

forests of the Sierra to the dense damp forests of the northern coast,
where a squirrel may travel in the branches of the thick-set trees

hundreds of miles without touching the ground. Around the upper belt
of the forest you may see gaps where the ground has been cleared by

avalanches of snow, thousands of tons in weight, which, descending
with grand rush and roar, brush the trees from their paths like so

many fragile shrubs or grasses.
At first the ascent is very gradual. The mountain begins to leave the

plain in slopes scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to three
degrees. These are continued by easy gradations mile after mile all

the way to the truncated, crumbling summit, where they attain a
steepness of twenty to twenty-five degrees. The grand simplicity of

these lines is partially interrupted on the north subordinate cone
that rises from the side of the main cone about three thousand feet

from the summit. This side cone, past which your way to the summit
lies, was active after the breaking-up of the main ice-cap of the

glacial period, as shown by the comparatively unwasted crater in which
it terminates and by streams of fresh-looking, unglaciated lava that

radiate from it as a center.
The main summit is about a mile and a half in diameter from southwest

to northeast, and is nearly covered with snow and neve, bounded by
crumbling peaks and ridges, among which we look in vain for any sure

plan of an ancient crater. The extremesummit is situated on the
southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds the general summit on the

east. Viewed from the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point
about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing before the stormy

atmospheric action to which it is subjected.
At the base of the eastern ridge, just below the extremesummit, hot

sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from
a fissure in the lava. Some of the many small vents cast up a spray

of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor.
The steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming

in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently
derived from the heated interior of the mountain, and may be regarded

as the last feeble expression of the mighty power that lifted the
entire mass of the mountain from the volcanic depths far below the

surface of the plain.
The view from the summit in clear weather extends to an immense

distance in every direction. Southeastward, the low volcanicportion
of the Sierra is seen like a map, both flanks as well as the crater-dotted

axis, as far as Lassen's Butte[6], a prominentlandmark and an
old volcano like Shasta, between ten and eleven thousand feet high,

and distant about sixty miles. Some of the higher summit peaks near
Independence Lake, one hundred and eighty miles away, are at times

distinctly visible. Far to the north, in Oregon, the snowy volcanic
cones of Mounts Pitt, Jefferson, and the Three Sisters rise in clear

relief, like majestic monuments, above the dim dark sea of the
northern woods. To the northeast lie the Rhett and Klamath Lakes, the

Lava Beds, and a grand display of hill and mountain and gray rocky
plains. The Scott, Siskiyou, and Trinity Mountains rise in long,

compact waves to the west and southwest, and the valley of the
Sacramento and the coast mountains, with their marvelouswealth of

woods and waters, are seen; while close around the base of the
mountain lie the beautiful Shasta Valley, Strawberry Valley,

Huckleberry Valley, and many others, with the headwaters of the
Shasta, Sacramento, and McCloud Rivers. Some observers claim to have

seen the ocean from the summit of Shasta, but I have not yet been so
fortunate.

The Cinder Cone near Lassen's Butte is remarkable as being the scene
of the most recent volcaniceruption in the range. It is a

symmetrical truncated cone covered with gray cinders and ashes, with a
regular crater in which a few pines an inch or two in diameter are

growing. It stands between two small lakes which previous to the last
eruption, when the cone was built, formed one lake. From near the

base of the cone a flood of extremely rough black vesicular lava
extends across what was once a portion of the bottom of the lake into

the forest of yellow pine.
This lava flow seems to have been poured out during the same eruption

that gave birth to the cone, cutting the lake in two, flowing a little
way into the woods and overwhelming the trees in its way, the ends of

some of the charred trunks still being visible, projecting from
beneath the advanced snout of the flow where it came to rest; while

the floor of the forest for miles around is so thicklystrewn with
loose cinders that walking is very fatiguing. The Pitt River Indians

tell of a fearful time of darkness, probably due to this eruption,
when the sky was filled with falling cinders which, as they thought,

threatened every living creature with destruction, and say that when
at length the sun appeared through the gloom it was red like blood.

Less recent craters in great numbers dot the adjacent region, some
with lakes in their throats, some overgrown with trees, others nearly

bare--telling monuments of Nature's mountain fires so often lighted
throughout the northern Sierra. And, standing on the top of icy

Shasta, the mightiest fire-monument of them all, we can hardly fail to
look forward to the blare and glare of its next eruption and wonder

whether it is nigh. Elsewhere men have planted gardens and vineyards
in the craters of volcanoes quiescent for ages, and almost without

warning have been hurled into the sky. More than a thousand years of
profound calm have been known to intervene between two violent

eruptions. Seventeen centuries intervened between two consecutive
eruptions on the island of Ischia. Few volcanoes continue permanently

in eruption. Like gigantic geysers, spouting hot stone instead of hot
water, they work and sleep, and we have no sure means of knowing

whether they are only sleeping or dead.
IV

A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit
Toward the end of summer, after a light, open winter, one may reach

the summit of Mount Shasta without passing over much snow, by keeping
on the crest of a long narrow ridge, mostly bare, that extends from

near the camp-ground at the timberline. But on my first excursion to
the summit the whole mountain, down to its low swelling base, was

smoothly laden with loose fresh snow, presenting a most glorious mass
of winter mountain scenery, in the midst of which I scrambled and

reveled or lay snugly snowbound, enjoying the fertile clouds and the
snow-bloom in all their growing, drifting grandeur.

I had walked from Redding, sauntering leisurely from station to
station along the old Oregon stage road, the better to see the rocks

and plants, birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing
Sacramento to its fountains around icy Shasta. The first rains had

fallen on the lowlands, and the first snows on the mountains, and
everything was fresh and bracing, while an abundance of balmy sunshine

filled all the noonday hours. It was the calm afterglow that usually
succeeds the first storm of the winter. I met many of the birds that

had reared their young and spent their summer in the Shasta woods and
chaparral. They were then on their way south to their winter homes,

leading their young full-fledged and about as large and strong as the
parents. Squirrels, dry and elastic after the storms, were busy about

their stores of pine nuts, and the latest goldenrods were still in
bloom, though it was now past the middle of October. The grand color

glow--the autumnal jubilee of ripe leaves--was past prime, but,
freshened by the rain, was still making a fine show along the banks of

the river and in the ravines and the dells of the smaller streams.
At the salmon-hatching establishment on the McCloud River I halted a

week to examine the limestone belt, grandly developed there, to learn
what I could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks, and to

give time for the fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the mountain to
settle somewhat, with a view to making the ascent. A pedestrian on

these mountain roads, especially so late in the year, is sure to
excite curiosity, and many were the interrogations concerning my